It started as a holiday to Australia on my paternity leave, it is now a journey. We have moved Down Under, to the Lucky Country…..

Tag Archives: Southbank

In a few weeks it will be 12 months since our arrival in this beautiful country.

So many things have happened, so many changes and more is to come in the next few weeks. Anyone, that sees my FB page would thing it was easy and in many ways it was but it is still hard in different ways as well. Any new beginning is hard, the heartache for your friends and your home – our old home – is ever-present, we miss our old ways and we miss being in place that is familiar and where things make sense.

We are now in a new home, it bears a German name –Altona North– Altona is a borough in the city of Hamburg in the north of Germany. Altona North is a suburb to the west of Melbourne. It is about 15 min drive to Federation Square and the Southbank, it is a 10 minute drive to Altona and Williamstown beach and more importantly it is within 10-15 minutes drive from either Beth’s and my workplace.

Nevertheless, after almost 12 months it is still a place where we often struggle to make sense of things. The biggest issue and the one we are currently facing again is our dwellings. We just signed the 4th lease in about 7 months and besides the 1st one where we disputed the lease on account of false claims about the property it has always been involuntary. The new property, we are picking the keys up on the 22nd, will hopefully be the last place we will have to move for at least a couple of years. They are telling us it is a good time to buy but it is not yet time for us. We will want to try it out for another couple of years and make sure that this is home.

In the past 12 months a lot of the misconceptions have been cleared, loads of new views and opinions have been formed, this Lucky Country certainly does not lack surprises… ….more on that in subsequent posts…

The view of the heads protecting the harbour in Sydney from the Sydney Harbour National Park